The Women's Review of Books articles from January 2003

The Women's Review of Books archives from January 2003

The second time around.(This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation edited by Gloria E. Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 2002, 624 pp., $24.95 paper. In 1981, Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga published This Bridge Called...

Letters.
January 1, 2003... Dear Editors: Irene Peslikis, born October 7 1943, died on November 28 2002 of all the pains and troubles that go with poverty, poor heath care, a devastating separation and being crippled. She was a feminist artist who was one of the...

Racial formation in Kate Chopin's Youth's Companion stories. (Coloring Locals).(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... "In Coloring Locals, Shaker brings Kate Chopin's Youth's Companion stories out of the shadows to which they are usually consigned, showing how they illuminate an important aspect of Chopin's social and racial attitudes as well as her continuing...

Passing the ammunition.(Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate by Naomi Klein. New York: Picador, 2002, 267 pp., $13.00 paper. Naomi Klein's first book, No Logo, explored the marketing strategies and production realities...

Looping and listing.(Miniatures)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Miniatures by Norah Labiner. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2002, 381 pp., $23 hardcover. This is a novel that hopes for a reader in an easygoing mood--perhaps in a hammock on a summer afternoon, relaxed, playful, with all the time...

Slow going.(Equality Practice: Civil Unions and the Future of Gay Rights)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Equality Practice: Civil Unions and the Future of Gay Rights by William N. Eskridge, Jr. New York: Routledge, 2002, 280 PP., $17.95 paper. In November of 1990, Craig Dean and Patrick Gill sued the District of Columbia for refusing to...

Out of her depth.(Emma's War)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002, 389 pp., $25.00 hardcover. Emma's War is told as an exciting adventure story, drawing readers into the intricacies of the little understood "tragedy of Sudan." The tragedy...

Her father's daughter.(My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances by Suzy McKee Charnas. New York: Putnam, 2002, 306 pp., $23.95 hardcover. Family 'history' is crap, nothing but lies and baloney," Robin McKee tells his daughter,...

Dramatic monologue.(Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi by Nawal El Saadawi, translated by Sherif Hetata. New York: Zed Books, 2002, 251 PP., $69.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper. In 1956, baby daughter in her arms, Nawal El Saadawi traveled from...

Secret ingredients.(Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote by Janet Theophano. New York: Palgrave, 2002, 362 pp., $29.95 hardcover. If one of the insights of the women's movement in the 1970s was that "the personal is...

The way we were.(Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons by Lynn Peril. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002, 224 Pp., $15.95 paper. For readers of a certain age, a ghost hovers over Pink Think, Lynn Peril's survey of the images of femininity that...

Fortune.(Poem)
January 1, 2003... Fortune Julia Cole It said stubbornness is not a virtue and I ate the cookie and realized I really prefer a fortune that is more of a prediction, not just a truism my mother could have told me. The fortunes I like seek me...

Sleeper.(Poem)
January 1, 2003... Sleeper Julia Cole Someone is gathering the last of the soup, is scraping a spoon on the smooth bottom of a bowl. I am looking for the noise, I look around at my people, my family and friends, gathered here in the room...

Building a better shoestring.(Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses by Martha Shirk and Anna S. Wadi. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002, 306 pp., $26.00 hardcover. Cute doesn't say enough about these little mocs,"...

Performance artists.(Rockin' Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Rockin' Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock by Mimi Schippers. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002, 208 pp., $20.00 paper. The idea that gender is a constantly shifting performance has been around...

Death and transfiguration.(two books of poetry by women)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Intervale: New and Selected Poems by Betty Adcock. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2001, 181 pp., $28.95 hardcover. Shadow of Heaven: Poems by Ellen Bryant Voigt. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002, 87 pp., $21.00 hardcover....

Supporting cast.(The Girls in the Back Room: Looking at the Lesbian Bar)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... The Girls in the Back Room: Looking at the Lesbian Bar by Kelly Hankin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, 248 pp., $18.95 paper. The politics of visibility have long structured lesbian and gay social movements....

Drinking gender.(Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America )(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America by Lori Rotskoff. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, 307 pp., $45.00 hardcover, $18.95 paper. A TV commercial now showing on Ontario public...

No safe spaces.(two books on lesbian violence)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Woman-to-Woman Sexual Violence: Does She Gall It Rape? by Lori B. Girshick. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002, 201 pp., $16.95 paper. No More Secrets: Violence in Lesbian Relationships by Janice Ristock. New York: Routledge,...

Chain Letter from Miami.(Poem)
January 1, 2003... Chain Letter from Miami Carolyne Wright Ricky Martin goes on living La Vida Loca. Manatees drift up the Gables Waterway in winter, but if this is warm for Miami anhingas spreading their wings over flame-trees' shadowed limbs...

As I Drive Over an Irrigation Ditch at the End of Summer, I Think of a Small-Town American Preacher.(Poem)
January 1, 2003... As I Drive Over an Irrigation Ditch at the End of Summer, I Think of a Small-Town American Preacher Carolyne Wright (with apologies to James Wright) Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness...

Win some, lose some.(The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction)(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002, 295 pp., $19.95 paper. Two keys to successful scholarship are choosing a subject sufficiently narrow and well-defined to...

The Bookshelf.(Bibliography)
January 1, 2003... Each month we list the recently published books received during the preceding month or so which we think readers of the Women's Review will want to know about. This is, however, a very partial selection of the books by and about women published...